


Man Comes Around

by The_Blonde_and_the_Brunette



Series: vengeance in my heart, sorrow in my step [1]
Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: Arthur Morgan rides again, Conquest/Plague, Gen, horsemen of the apocalypse, necromancy?, slighlty sacrilegious if you want to take it that way, the birth of a horseman, the man came around, the white rider - Freeform, what once was dead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-29
Updated: 2020-04-29
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:35:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23913178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Blonde_and_the_Brunette/pseuds/The_Blonde_and_the_Brunette
Summary: Arthur Morgan was buried on a pretty hillside facing west, laid to rest among the weeds and wildflowers, with a crudely bound wooden cross to proclaim his spot and a beautiful view as a backdrop.Conquest was raised from his grave, bound again to his mortal bones, and commanded to ride the earth once more.
Series: vengeance in my heart, sorrow in my step [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1723663
Comments: 4
Kudos: 34





	Man Comes Around

**Author's Note:**

> I have been kicking this around for so long, and now thanks to my wonderful Beta who finally read the outline for this series, I CAN BEGIN. rated mature for this one, but the others in the series will be rated for explicit. Not for sex necessarily, but it will be hitting adult themes and content.

Arthur Morgan was buried on a pretty hillside facing west, laid to rest among the weeds and wildflowers, with a crudely bound wooden cross to proclaim his spot and a beautiful view as a backdrop.He was buried by a friend, a brother, who laid him down in the warmed earth and hesitated when it came time to cover him up.But in the end, it wasn’t really Arthur Morgan that disappeared under shovelfuls of dirt: it was a sickly husk, sallow skin and frail bone racked with disease, left behind after the hardened core of steel that had been the man had passed. 

Charles Smith left the shovel there when the deed was done, and rode north, back to the fleeing people he had decided to follow, leaving behind the grave of a man he had gladly called friend.

oOoOoOo

Souls are not meant to come back to their containers.Birth is a violent, painful affair, made tolerable by the infancy of the soul entering the body. A grown man, however, that has lived and tasted life, known pain, joy, sorrow, and the tedious eventuality of death, experiences every single nuance of becoming again, and will find it just a different shade of dying. 

Arthur Morgan choked on the first lungful of air, tasted foul soil in the back of his mouth and heaved, body rebelling against the experience.He writhed, bones shifting and catching against one another, rolled over on his side and retched, until finally his stomach contorted and spewed out the grave dirt. Again and again his frame heaved, shuddered, emptied, until the cold air could stab down his airways, rattle around in his lungs until they remembered their original purpose.

White hot pain skewered his head, threatened to burst out behind his eyelids, ran a course of liquid fire through his limbs, burning feeling back into his muscles.His heart was a ponderous thing, thudding heavily behind his thin ribcage, slow and sluggish as it familiarized itself with pumping again. Fingers twitched, toes rubbed, and finally, he was able to unclench from his fetal position.

Gradually, the white noise clanging in his ears receded, and he was aware of his own breath.Gasping, at first, something thin and broken and painfully familiar, but with each drag of icy cold air into his lungs the motion became easier and easier.Pale light warmed the back of his eyelids, the once harsh and painful stimulus now bearable, and cautiously he scrunched his eyes, experimenting on how much it would hurt to open them.

He gathered enough courage to blink one, twice, flecks of grave dirt slowly sliding away as his eyelashes unstuck from each other, and he was left staring up at a pale grey sky. His breath caught at the sight, then he coughed, his body rebelling at the hiccup to his already laboring system.

“Beautiful day, isn’t it?”

The voice, deep and sonorous, sent a shiver of fear through his nerves, rubbing fragile bone against rebuilding muscle. His head whipped to the side, brain pounding and protesting again the inside of his skull at the jarring movement, forcing Arthur to close his eyes momentarily before fighting them open again.

The man was familiar in the most unusual way, like a half formed memory slinking around the side of his mind. It was in the way his hands clasped behind his back, the easy grace in the tall frame. Arthur slowly trailed his eyes down him, taking in the immaculate black suit and matching shoes, before returning to the man’s face, carved classical features embellished with a swooping mustache. It was his eyes that held him though, twin orbs of onyx staring down at the man laid out on the ground as if this was all perfectly normal.

“Who-” He broke off to cough at the sound of his own voice, forgetting for half a heartbeat as his vocal cords twanged in his throat, raw and bruised and protesting greatly.

The man waited patiently, making no move to assist Arthur, simply standing still until the coughing fit subsided.

“Where- where am I?” There was that phantom voice again, thin and reedy, so different from the booming snarl that he wanted to hurl at the stranger.

“A much better question than your original one,” the man blinked, his face shuttering for one moment, before he held a pale hand aloft and pointed at something behind Arthur’s head. “A pretty spot, to be sure.”

Arthur slowly tilted his head, followed the man’s finger, an unknown dread building up in his gut that solidified when he saw the crude cross, the painstakingly carved words upon it. 

Feeling sick, he stubbornly looked away, choosing to stare at the sky again. “Is this hell?”

“No, this isn’t hell,” but the face still held amusement, whether at the naïveté of Arthur’s question or the question itself, he couldn’t be sure.

Arthur’s fingers on his right hand twitched, and he glanced down, bile rising up his throat when he saw the twining, slimy red flesh growing over naked bones.

“What the hell?!” It came out as a squawk, fear evident as a chill went down his spine, and he tried to jerk his hand up and away, but the appendage stubbornly stayed still. Breathless, he looked down again, and while his muddy, torn clothes hid most of his body from his sight, the fabric clung to him in a way that left little imagination to what was under them.

Another breath stuttered in his empty chest, white light blocking out his vision, the faint ringing in his ears becoming deafening once more.

The man shifted over him, pulled his mind back from the brink of total terror, and Arthur released the breath he’d been holding captive with another gagging cough.

“Takes some time, I’m afraid. You were pretty rotten by the time I got here.” His fingers tapped together behind his back, gaze trailing down Arthur’s clothes as the man became aware of more painful muscle twitches. 

Arthur’s mind caught on one word, and he parroted it back in a croak, “rotten?”

The man nodded, walked slowly to the opposite side of Arthur, forcing him to turn his head to keep him in sight.“Yes, but you seem to be almost back together again.I think you could sit up now, if you wanted.”

Arthur hesitated, fear eating at his gut at the casual way the strange man said those words, not yet ready to see what he meant for himself.

The man tilted his head, eyes crinkling in a semblance of amusement, though the burning within stayed. “Well, no matter. In the end, this is all about what you wanted.”

Arthur turned away from him, back to the sky, watched as a bird fluttered across, the limbs of a tree in the corner of his vision dipped and swayed. 

His brow furrowed.No soft tickle of wind upon his cheeks, no creak and groan of a tree protesting the way the wind manhandled its branches. No birds twittering in the leaves, no whisper of the grass rasping against its neighbors.

Yet, he could hear his breathing, heard the strange man talking, heard his own answers, limited though they were.

He looked back at his visitor, tracked over the stillness of his expression, and asked, “What is this?”

The strange Man spread his arms wide, the familiar gesture tugging at Arthur’s body, arms twitching as he fought down a memory. “This, is life, friend.”

“I’m dead.” Bitten out, not examined beyond the brief flash of remembered agony, and belatedly Arthur wondered at the truth he was given. He was suppose to be dead, suppose to be gone, not suppose to be here.

“Yes, you were.” 

Arthur could read between the lines easily enough. Laying there in the cold dirt, birthing pains still wracking his body, he could feel the slow, solid build of anger in his gut. Rasping, gasping, he was finally able to snap out a weaker version of his usual growling bite: “you should’ve left me dead.”

The strange Man bent down next to him, hands hiking the fabric covering his thighs as he did so, and said, “maybe, but what’s done is done. I won’t send you back, not now, not when there’s work to be done.”

“I ain’t workin for you.”

“Hm,” the strange Man leaned further over him, top hat blocking out the weak sun as he peered down at Arthur. “But you are. You’ve been working for me for a long time.”

Clearly, he was insane. Arthur stared up at him, jaw working angrily, weighing his options, wishing he had tried to sit up when first offered the chance. He felt vulnerable, laid out on the ground like a hunted animal, those dark eyes deadlier than a snare to keep him in place. “I don’t even know you.”

“Oh, but you do, Arthur.” Abruptly the spell was broken, the Strange Man leaning back once more and looking down the length of Arthur’s prone body, gaze assessing. “I rather think you should try sitting up now.”

It was painful, even though Arthur had steeled himself for pain. His joints caught, tightened on their respective bones, his backbones rasped against one another before sliding in place. His heart protested greatly, pulling blood from his head, leaving him gasping, coughing and sputtering, leaning heavily on his left arm despite the pain shooting through it and the way it shook under his weight.

“Good, good.” The Strange Man walked around to stand in front of him, and Arthur tracked him with lowered eyes. When he turned his body to face the outlaw again, Arthur started at the hat held in his hands.

He’d given that hat to Marston, had seen the younger man stumble and slide his way down a mountain trail with the old black leather jammed tight on his head.

“Where’d-”

“Thought you’d be needing this, the Man from Blackwater didn’t anymore.” 

The Man from Blackwater, said calmly like Arthur should know who that was. But he didn’t, and his heart ached to see his good luck charm again. He didn’t dare ask after John, not from this man with coals for eyes.

Arthur craned his neck to glare upwards, asking once more: “What is this?”

The Strange Man ran his hands along the folded brim, smoothing it out and rubbing the dirt out of the cracked indents. “Some time ago, in a town far to the south and west, you killed a man. Do you remember?”

Arthur scoffed, bitterness creeping through as he rasped, “I killed a lotta men.”

“This one though,” the Strange Man held aloft a finger as he shook it at Arthur, “this one was special. You didn’t have much time, he was older, quicker, a better shooter.”

Arthur’s eyes narrowed, unsure where this was going.

“And yet, you killed him. Shot him straight through the heart. Folks said it was almost… uncanny, how quick you were.” His eyes watched like a hawk, saw the slow realization that crept over Arthur’s face. 

The deadeye. “That weren’t- that weren’t special.”

The Strange Man leaned forward a little bit, canted his head slightly downward. “You were a deadshot, my friend. Only a handful of men in history can claim that title.” _And they were all mine._ It remained unspoken, but swirled between them like a dirt devil, licking at old wounds.

The Strange Man shifted the hat to one hand, held out his other, and Arthur wanted to recoil from it as though it was a snake. “Take my hand, friend. Ride again.”

“I don’t want this,” he rasped, desperate, holding his trembling right hand against his chest, spooked by the way it twitched like a living thing.

“I won’t send you back,” the Strange Man repeated, stern and cold. “I need my conquest.” He dropped the old, beat up hat on the ground, and Arthur watched the way it settled in the dirt. “This is the beginning, take my hand.”

“No.” He said it forcefully, as though to deny the way his palm ached and fingers burned the longer he held back.

The Strange Man eyed him, hand steady in the air. “You’ll live forever, be invincible, to a certain point. I’m offering you your second chance, Arthur. Take it.”

“I already got my second chance.” He just wanted to lay back down in the dirt, escape this man that looked at him with burning eyes, give in and die again. But the visage above him tightened, lips pressed together in a harsh line, and Arthur stiffened his weak spine in an effort to hide the way he trembled.

“You made this deal long ago, friend, and the terms were met. You belong to me. Now, take my hand.” His voice warped, became something deeper, the familiar accent burning a hole in Arthur’s chest as it sought to shatter his heart. 

“Damn you,” he hissed, his left arm coming up to grip his right hand, pressing against the ache that had started to eat at the bones in his hand.

The Strange Man sighed, “if only it were that easy,” and snapped the fingers of his other hand.

Arthur cried out, a spasm jerking through his arms, right hand snapping out to slap into the iron grip, and his back bowed from the burst of lightening at the contact. He writhed, the current a live wire that burned its way up his arm and burrowed into the base of his skull. 

_Horse, road, gunshots. So tired, so tired. Keep Pushing, can’t stop._ He relived that last awful hour, conscious of a shape hidden in his shadow, the Strange Man keeping pace behind him like muck on his boot. Always there, always there. _Fire, heat, burning house. Check the stable. Desert, Prairie, Mountains, so cold, can’t stay here, we’ll freeze._ He was young again, small and skinny, stuck on the back of a horse, and when he tilted his head upwards he could just make out the black, glossy hair of the person in front of him before light flashed in front of his eyes, and he screamed, body jerking at the clap that ricocheted through his entire being.

When he finally came down from the pain, he was kneeling in the dirt, warm tracks of tears running down his cheeks, and fire still burning through his arm. Wisps of smoke curled above the burnt leather of his jacket, and when he exhaled it came out as a garbled sob.

The Strange Man wiped his hands against each other, stepping slightly back. “Give yourself a minute, then we’ll see if you can stand.”

“You,” he licked his dry lips, tried again, though it came out a whisper. “You don’t own me.”

The Strange Man was silent, and Arthur knew how weak the lie was. He craned his head to the side, looked down at his bare right hand. The skin was covered in blackened, charred lines, as if lightening really had run up his arm. “What is this?”

“The birth of a horseman,” was the reply he got.


End file.
